TR Jan 30 - Feb 7, 2016: “Let’s Go Away!” (Updated February 10, 2016) - Page 2 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
As of January 1, 2019, we have closed our forums. This is a decision we did not come to lightly, but it is necessary. The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk. The server software itself must be updated, and it cannot be without removing the forums.
So it is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to our long-running forums. They came online in 2000 and brought together so many wonderful Disney fans. We had friendships form, careers launch, couples marry, children born ... all because of this amazing community.
Thank you to each of you who were a part of this community. You made it possible.
And a very special thank you to our Guides (moderators), past and present, who kept our forums a happy place to be. You are the glue that held everything together, and we are forever grateful to you. Thank you aliceinwdw, Caldercup, MrsM, WillCAD, Fortissimo, GingerJ, HiddenMickey, CRCrazy, Eeyoresmom, disneyknut, disneydani, Cam22, chezp, WDWfan, Luvsun, KMB733, rescuesk, OhToodles!, Colexis Mom, lfredsbo, HiddenMickey, DrDolphin, DopeyGirl, duck addict, Disneybine, PixieMichele, Sandra Bostwick, Eeyore Tattoo, DyanKJ130, Suzy Q'Disney, LilMarcieMouse, AllisonG, Belle*, Chrissi, Brant, DawnDenise, Crystalloubear, Disneymom9092, FanOfMickey, Goofy4Goofy, GoofyMom, Home4us123, iamgrumpy, ilovedisney247, Jennifer2003, Jenny Pooh, KrisLuvsDisney, Ladyt, Laughaholic88, LauraBelle Hime, Lilianna, LizardCop, Loobyoxlip, lukeandbrooksmom, marisag, michnash, MickeyMAC, OffKilter_Lynn, PamelaK, Poor_Eeyore, ripkensnana, RobDVC, SHEANA1226, Shell of the South, snoozin, Statelady01, Tara O'Hara, tigger22, Tink and Co., Tinkerbelz, WDWJAMBA, wdwlovers, Wendyismyname, whoSEZ, WildforWD, and WvuGrrrl. You made the magic.
We want to personally thank Sara Varney, who coordinated our community for many years (among so many other things she did for us), and Cheryl Pendry, our Message Board Manager who helped train our Guides, and Ginger Jabour, who helped us with the PassPorter-specific forums and Live! Guides. Thank you for your time, energy, and enthusiasm. You made it all happen.
There are other changes as well.
Why? Well, the world has changed. And change with it, we must. The lyrics to "We Go On" for IllumiNations say it best:
We go on to the joy and through the tears
We go on to discover new frontiers
Moving on with the current of the years.
We go on
Moving forward now as one
Moving on with a spirit born to run
Ever on with each rising sun.
To a new day, we go on.
It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
But eventually, we must move on and move forward. It is the right thing to do.
So we are retiring this newsletter, as we simply cannot keep up with it. Many thanks to Mouse Fan Travel who supported it all these years, to All Ears and MousePlanet who helped us with news, to our many article contributors, and -- most importantly -- to Sara Varney who edited our newsletter so wonderfully for years and years.
And we are no longer charging for the Live Guides. If you have a subscription, it's yours to keep for the lifetime of the Live Guides at no additional cost. The Live Guides will stay online, barring server issues and technical problems, for all of 2019.
That said, PassPorter is not going away. Most of the resources will remain online for as long as we can support them, and after that we will find ways to make whatever we can available. PassPorter means a great deal to us, and to many of you, and we will do our best to keep it alive in whatever way we can. Our server costs are high, and they'll need to come out of our pockets, so in the future you can expect some changes so we can bring those costs down.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your amazing support over the years. Without you, there's no way us little guys could have made something like this happen and given the "big guys" a run for their money. PassPorter was consistently the #3 guidebook after the Unofficial and Official guides, which was really unheard of for such a small company to do. We ROCKED it thanks to you and your support and love!
If you miss us, you can still find some of us online. Sara started a new blog at DisneyParkPrincess.com -- I strongly urge you to visit and get on her mailing list. She IS the Disney park princess and knows Disney backward and forward. And I am blogging as well at JenniferMaker.com, which is a little craft blog I started a couple of years ago to make ends meet. You can see and hear me in my craft show at https://www.youtube.com/c/jennifermaker . Many PassPorter readers and fans are on Facebook, in groups they formed like the PassPorter Trip Reports and PassPorter Crafting Challenge (if you join, just let them know you read about it in the newsletter). And some of our most devoted community members started a forum of their own at Pixie Dust Lane and all are invited over.
So we encourage you to stay in touch with us and your fellow community members wherever works best for you!
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We love Segway tours and it's always a bonus when you don't have to go through lots and lots of training to get off and running on your tour.
Yes indeed!
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Originally Posted by Colexis Mom
Great times in Daytona!
Thanks!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cam22
Your accommodations at Daytona Beach look lovely. The Segway tour looks like it would be so much fun, too.
I must say, I really loved our condo in Daytona Beach.
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Originally Posted by jandsdennis
Looked like a rally nice beach and the segway tour sounded fun. That is something that I have never done.
It is fun! If you've never done it, it will be wonderful once you get to a place that does it (and is semi-well organized). I would recommend the one in Clearwater Beach for first-timers for sure.
I would recommend Disney's Segway tours for first-timers, but they don't have the awesome ones in Epcot anymore.
[B]Wednesday, February 3, 2016: Shopping and Speedways[B]
I used to be pretty into NASCAR, but as with the NBA and my interest dying out when Jordan finally retired for the last time, my interest went out the window about when Dale Earnhardt, Sr. died in 2001. Ironically enough, that somber anniversary just passed again...
But I have always wanted to go to Daytona International Speedway, and today I got to fulfill a lifetime dream... Surprisingly, it was even better than I ever expected!
So we got over to the Daytona Speedway early, and good thing too because we had NO idea where we were going... LOL! Anyways we finally got ourselves in the right spot, and got our tickets for the 11:30 Speedway Tour, and I have to say I became enthralled and fascinated all over again. We had a most excellent tour guide, and I highly recommend this tour, even for those of you who aren't even close to being NASCAR fans!
PRO TIP: The building for the speedway tours is wholly separate from the speedway itself. Don’t turn directly at the speedway, turn on Bill France Blvd.
Those banked turns are way impressive in person!
Now with 20% less safety risk to the fans!
Me and the Dale Earnhardt, Sr. statue
Then after that we went to the Volusia Mall and got me three shirts (one a Guayabera style shirt and two golf shirts) at Macy's, looked in JC Penneys and Books A Million for a few minutes, and had lunch at Outback.
After that I flirted briefly with the idea of going to the Ocean Walk Shoppes, eventually deciding against it, and making another Publix run and coming back to the condo. And that was it for this day!
Luke and I really want to go Daytona Speedway for the 500 one of these days. We'll definitely need to do the tour, too. Sounds like it is very well done.
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So glad your visit to Daytona exceeded your expectations!
Thanks! (Also thanks for not giving me grief about not posting for almost a year... sorry about that, stuff got mega-busy.
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Originally Posted by Cam22
Luke and I really want to go Daytona Speedway for the 500 one of these days. We'll definitely need to do the tour, too. Sounds like it is very well done.
Oh yeah. I would *never* go for the 500 due to too many crazy people, but I'd watch on TV for sure.
BTW, Photobucket's never, ever, EVER a good thing to resize one's pics... I, like, *just* finished resizing everything I am going to use for the remainder of my TR.
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Originally Posted by Colexis Mom
Great pictures from Daytona!
Thanks!
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Originally Posted by Nemo125
Just catching on to this TR. Sounds like all fun!
It WAS all fun! And now I'll be posting in this again (AND completing this leg) after almost a year.
NOTE: I am *SO* sorry I completely stopped posting this… almost a year and no updates. SORRY. My schooling got mega crazy and I am now graduated from Excelsior College with a Bachelor of Sciences in Liberal Arts… so now I can get back to this.
And before I get back to my TR (after a year!), I wanted to explain my teaser from last time. I was making reference to Foghorn Leghorn always referring to his adversary the chicken hawk as a “loud-mouthed schnook”, and before my time at the Marine Science Center, I had no idea that there was a fish called a snook. Now I do.
Thursday, February 4, 2016: A Slow, Stormy Day
Today we decided to take it slow today, but we did manage to eat lunch at a place called BJ's Restaurant and Brewhouse... That was kinda obvious!
Then we tried to shop at Casual Male XL, and we were much more successful at Best Buy and Barnes & Noble.
Then we came back to the condo and plotzed. Then the big rain and thunderstorm hit! Thus ends this day!
Friday, February 5, 2016: Off To the Marine Science Center!
Today went by really fast!
We had breakfast at our condo and then we went to the Marine Science Center, which (I thought) would have been a compromise selection for my dragging her to the Daytona International Speedway, had we both not been completely enthralled by the tour we had.
The Marine Science Center was quite possibly one of the best places like that I've ever been to. I got so many pictures with my new DSLR, it was tough to pick only a few for this TR.
I love how there’s not only parking across the road from this sign, but also that there’s an educational aspect! Not so much when you get stuck for 5 minutes or so behind a school bus taking its sweet time unloading children going on a field trip, though…
I love this manatee statue… Wish I’d gotten pics of the manatees at The Seas… ah well, always a next time, there is…
It’s taking all I have to NOT make a CeCe the Seasick Sea Serpent reference… this is the Marine Science Center’s mascot, CeCe the Sea Turtle. Hey you gotta make it entertaining for the kids who are bored to tears on these field trips SOMEHOW…
He’s just as bored as the schoolchildren on their boring field trip to the Marine Science Center when they’d rather be ANYWHERE else… :rolleyes
This is a snook. The bubbles surrounding the snook is because the snook was really happy to see my mom and was flailing around, and scaring the MSC volunteers!
I don’t think I’ve ever been given the side eye by an eel before!
Same eel, straight on.
Sea turtle specimen
Sea turtle nest example
Some pregnant (male) seahorses
Humpback whale jawbone - side view
Coral skeleton
Then we drove down A1A for a bit... By the way, driving down A1A is a lot harder than it looks. You won’t actually be driving *on* A1A the entire time, and there aren't many places you can get on to (or off of) A1A. So we drove for awhile, realized that there wasn't any place to get back off and drove back, stopped at Publix briefly, and then back to our condo.
Then... Then things get interesting. You see, in our condo building there's a neat little "fine dining" establishment called Top of Daytona, and you don't have to be living or renting at the condominium building to go to eat there. We'd been curious about it ever since we'd checked in, and we decided that tonight would be our night to try it (especially since we'd be eating like kings and queens while we were at Disney). So, we go up there, and... It took 20 minutes for us to get drinks. And then, overall, it took an hour and a half to not only get our food, but to finish it as well. That's pretty slow, because normally I can be in and out of Outback Steakhouse in about an hour.
View from Top of Daytona - Dusk
View from Top of Daytona - Sunset
View from Top of Daytona - Night
My view from my table… there was a performer playing basically Old People Musak…
My Scallops, Top of Daytona style!
After all that, we were pretty tired so that basically was the end of this day.
Saturday, February 6, 2016: Last Call For Daytona Beach!
After having a spot of coffee and then eating an early brunch, we went out in the rain back to Angell & Phelps Chocolate Factory and got some more Baby Bees (aka Mini Turtles...), then came back, watched The Martian (which I thought was really good), ate a fairly late supper and that was it. A fairly ignominious end to the Daytona Beach leg of my trip, and a perfect way to end this TR. Thank you for reading!
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Sounds like it is very well done. 
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